Untitled (Larry & Bobby Kissing)
Net art, performance, video
2016 - 2018
Untitled (Larry & Bobby Kissing) is networked performance series that explores queer representation through reenacting Robert Mapplethorpe’s iconic photograph of two leathermen kissing. Personally, the project is also a “checking” of my chosen family.
At the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, I was Bobby and the public was Larry. Anyone could kiss me. The IRL kiss was positioned in the back of the auditorium and the livestream was projected on stage.
At the International Center of Photography in New York, Larry and Bobby were played by women — one black, one white, boifriends, leatherwomen. Paloma Gil and shawné michaelain holloway’s kiss was live-streamed to an adult camming website where users online were able to interact with them and each other. The browser was projected back into the museum and surrounded the IRL audience.
Nayland Blake said of the ICP kiss, “Often the photographic image becomes the stopping point and museums of photography are a parade of ‘perfect’ indissoluble moments that then never go on from that reality. Seeing you flow into and out of that is radical.”
Acknowledgements: award New Jersey Council on the Arts; exhibitions Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and ICP (New York); reviews Vice (Paris) and ICP Blog (New York); photography Guaizine, Paul Soulellis, and Jacque Donaldson for ICP
Net art, performance, video
2016 - 2018
Untitled (Larry & Bobby Kissing) is networked performance series that explores queer representation through reenacting Robert Mapplethorpe’s iconic photograph of two leathermen kissing. Personally, the project is also a “checking” of my chosen family.
At the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, I was Bobby and the public was Larry. Anyone could kiss me. The IRL kiss was positioned in the back of the auditorium and the livestream was projected on stage.
At the International Center of Photography in New York, Larry and Bobby were played by women — one black, one white, boifriends, leatherwomen. Paloma Gil and shawné michaelain holloway’s kiss was live-streamed to an adult camming website where users online were able to interact with them and each other. The browser was projected back into the museum and surrounded the IRL audience.
Nayland Blake said of the ICP kiss, “Often the photographic image becomes the stopping point and museums of photography are a parade of ‘perfect’ indissoluble moments that then never go on from that reality. Seeing you flow into and out of that is radical.”
Acknowledgements: award New Jersey Council on the Arts; exhibitions Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and ICP (New York); reviews Vice (Paris) and ICP Blog (New York); photography Guaizine, Paul Soulellis, and Jacque Donaldson for ICP